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Minority languages and language revitalisation 81 language community or involves imposing significant restrictions on their opportunities or mobility’ (Patten and Kymlicka 2003: 49). 4.2.2 Guiding frameworks for language revitalisation Much of the language revitalisation literature consists of case studies, but there are also more theoretical contributions, two of which we single out for attention in this section: the GIDS scale of Fishman (1991, 2001b) and the model of ethnolinguistic vitality first proposed by Giles, Bourhis and Taylor (1977). 4.2.2.1 Fishman’s GIDS Scale Fishman’s eight-stage Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) (Fishman 1991: 87–109) has two main functions: first, it helps diagnose the extent to which a language is endangered, and, second, it helps guide revitalisation efforts, suggesting priorities for action and indicating how different restorative actions may be more effectively coordinated. Table 4.1 is an outline of its eight stages. Table 4.1 The GIDS scale (after Fishman 1991, 2001b: 466) Stage 8 Stage 8 lies at the most disrupted end of the scale, where the threatened language has undergone attrition to a point where only a few socially isolated, elderly speakers remain. Revitalisation efforts will involve work with informants directed at reassembling a grammar, a lexicon and a phonology, which can subsequently form the basis of teaching materials. This stage may also see efforts to instruct adults in the language. Stage 7 At stage 7 the threatened language is spoken by the older generation but not the younger. These elderly speakers, in contrast with stage 8, are socially integrated – living in neighbourhoods and homes alongside other minority community members, many of whom may be monoglot speakers of the dominant majority language. The focus, and goal, of revitalisation at this stage is to re-establish knowledge of the threatened language in the younger generation so that they may be equipped to transmit the language to their children in due course. Stage 6 Stage 6 is a key stage of the GIDS scale, for here the threatened language is transmitted intergenerationally within the family and is the normal language of informal spoken interaction across generations. Revitalisation efforts focus on consolidating the use of the threatened language in the family and on forming family-neighbourhood-community clusters of speakers, within which the language can be more effectively maintained as the principal medium of informal social interaction. Stage 5 At stage 5 literacy in the threatened language is established. Literacy teaching – for adults and youngsters – is envisaged as taking place principally in institutions run and controlled by the minority community, for example in neighbourhood literacy centres. (Fishman’s model here is the Basque ‘ikastolas’). The advantages of minority language literacy can be summarised as follows:
82 Language Planning and Education 1. It extends the functional range of the language 2. It confers prestige, and reduces the minority community’s dependence on the majority community’s print media 3. It provides an alternative medium for communication across time and space. Stage 4 At stage 4 the threatened language assumes a place in formal education – either in private schools maintained by the minority community or in state-funded public schools, where it is taught as a subject or else used as a joint medium along with the majority language. The attainment of stage 4 marks a significant break from the preceding stages in two main ways. First, the threatened minority language moves out of the informal, private domains to which it has largely been confined and into the public, formal domains hitherto reserved for the dominant majority language. Second, a measure of control is ceded to the majority community, on whose support further progress in revitalisation partly depends. Stage 3 At stage 3 the threatened language reappears in the work domain outside the minority language community, principally in smaller enterprises, some of which will be catering to the minority community and others to the majority community. In some cases the enterprise will be mainly staffed by minority speakers with some in executive positions, in which case the focus of revitalisation efforts fall on ensuring that intra-company communication is carried out in the minority language and that a minority language ethos prevails. Where, however, the enterprise is controlled and run by majority language speakers, effort is directed towards ensuring that services are delivered to the minority community in their language. State 2 At this stage, lower level state institutions (e.g. health and postal services, government-owned utilities, the police, courts etc.) begin to offer services in the minority language to those who request such provision. This represents a considerable advance for the minority language community, but Fishman (1991: 106) is wary that the resulting increased employability of minority language speakers may draw some of the more able into the ambit of the majority language community and away from their roots. Stage 1 At this stage, the highest level of recovery on the GIDS scale, the minority language will be present in the mass media, higher levels of education and the upper reaches of state administration. It will have been accorded some degree of official status – perhaps to the level of co-official language within its territory (see, for example, the status of Welsh in Wales following the passage of the 1993 Welsh Language Act). The minority community will enjoy a degree of economic and cultural autonomy. Finally, although Fishman does not mention it explicitly, it seems likely that the state will have granted some minority language rights – either on a territorial or a personality principle. For Fishman, stage 6 is pivotal since without intergenerational transmission the threatened language is merely ‘biding its time’. Thus, actions undertaken at other stages are only truly productive to the extent that they link back and strengthen this process. He remains noticeably circumspect about the contribution of stages 1 to 4, seeing them as desirable but not central – as is evident in this comment on stage 3:
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